


Beat The Devil's Tattoo

by spacemonster



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Everyone Dies And Noone Is Happy Especially Not Karkat, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemonster/pseuds/spacemonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're actually not doing much, on the day that the dead rise up.</p>
<p>You're a bit alarmed to go from store manager at Walmart to sole dude in charge of a rag-tag band of survivors, but it suits you just fine... you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story. Favourite characters will perish, ships will sink in gruesome and bloody ways, cliffhangers will be ABUNDANT and IRRITATING, and nobody is going to be safe for very long.
> 
> That said, content notes will precede pretty much every chapter: please mind them, and if you read something that you find upsetting that I failed to include in the notes, feel free to contact me and I will fix my mistake ASAP.
> 
> Relationship and character tags will be updated as and when they become relevant, and not sooner, to avoid spoilers. If it's any consolation, if a ship crops up that you really hate, it probably isn't going to last...
> 
> **Content note:** References (only) to violence.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS.

And you and all of your friends are DOOMED.

* * *

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering apocalypseArisen [AA] at 03:27 --  
CG: HOLY SHIT  
CG: ARADIA ARE YOU THERE?  
CG: ARADIA  
CG: ARADIA FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY WHAT THE FUCK COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE DOING RIGHT NOW THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN TALKING TO ME  
CG: IGNORE THE FACT THAT THAT MADE ME SOUND LIKE A GIANT ASSHOLE AND RESPOND ALREADY JESUS JUGGLING CHRIST  
AA: did your caps lock key get stuck again?  
AA: also calm down!  
AA: not that telling you to calm down is ever effectual  
AA: im on my phone is all hence the delay  
AA: my sincerest apologies mr vantas! it wont happen again!  
CG: OKAY GOOD YOU’RE ALIVE. AND AS ANNOYING AS EVER.  
CG: LISTEN. I’M COMING BACK TO WORK. I’LL BE THERE IN ABOUT TEN MINUTES.  
AA: what? why?  
CG: I DON’T EVEN HAVE TIME TO EXPLAIN, OKAY. SOMETHING REALLY BAD IS HAPPENING AND. JUST. TRUST ME. WE NEED TO STAY TOGETHER FOR NOW.  
AA: karkat what the hell is going on with you?  
AA: are you high or something? geez youve only been home for like five minutes surely  
AA: you need an intervention  
CG: ARADIA I AM STONE COLD FUCKING SOBER RIGHT NOW.  
CG: I AM A FUCKING MODEL OF PIETY BUT MY DRUG HABITS OR LACK THEREOF ARE NOT THE POINT  
CG: THE POINT IS THAT WE ARE ALL SO FUCKING SCREWED SO CAN YOU PLEASE WAIT UP FOR TEN MINUTES WHILE I COME AND SAVE YOUR SORRY ASS. NOT THAT YOU KNOW IT YET.  
AA: okay…  
AA: well ill be waiting i guess  
AA: and if this is you guys idea of a joke im not going to be impressed!  
CG: I LIKE TO THINK MY JOKES ARE ACTUALLY FUNNY  
CG: WHEREAS THIS IS POSSIBLY THE LEAST AMUSED I HAVE EVER BEEN. IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.  
CG: ANYWAY WE’LL PICK YOU UP SOON.  
CG: TAKE CARE.  
\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering apocalypseArisen [AA] at 03:36 --

* * *

You hate Vriska. You hate her, and you spend most of your life wishing that somebody would drop an anvil on her head, just to get her to shut up for once.

That, you think, is what makes it so funny when you get back from work and find her lying on her bedroom floor, pinned down by something that’s trying to rip her fucking face off.

Because it’s not really what you wanted after all, right? Be careful what you wish for, and all that.

HA HA HA.


	2. Shine Bright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content note:** Violence and gore.

You throw yourself down in front of the television and crack open a can of Coke, licking the froth off your fingers as you fumble for the remote. It’s Friday night, which ought to be universally fucking recognised as Karkat’s Quiet Time, because it’s god damn sacred as far as you’re concerned. Flicking through the channels, you take a little sip of Coke, and eventually you settle on TLC. Nobody has to know that you’re watching reruns of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

The light in here’s terrible, but everything in the tiny, shitty house that you share with your giant, shitty housemate is terrible. It’s some 30’s piece of ass that barely qualifies as habitable, every inch is chock full of cobwebs and dead rats and the floorboards are coming up and the pipes make these rattling moaning groaning sounds in the middle of the night and get you up all in a cold sweat. Whole place stinks of mothballs and mildew and the furniture’s all older than your fucking grandparents. No amount of dusting will save this shithole. It’s the kind of place that you’d see in some creepy music video with an old record scratching and musicbox notes tinkling away in the background. And one of those weird doll things with the eerily human eyes. You snort into your Coke can. You’re fucking hilarious.

From upstairs, you hear a thump and a resulting stream of muffled curses. Vriska just tripped out of the shower, which is something the two of you do on a regular basis because the tiles are a random jumble. She’s getting ready for a night on the town – you know this because she does this every Friday and always brings home someone fucking horrific who you have to kick out the next day. You scowl at the ceiling. You wish she’d shut the fuck up. You’re trying to watch your shows.

Approximately four minutes later she shows up in the dust-lined doorway. The doorway is set in the wall behind the sofa, so you can’t actually see her, but you know she is there because you can feel her being annoying already. Completely not to your surprise, she circles you, stalking around the edge of the room to place herself directly in between you and Mama June.

“Do you think you can stop ruining my fucking life for longer than five minutes at a time?” you snarl at her, staring directly at her belly like you can see right through her. “And can you put your god damn fucking tits away? You might think you’re a perfect ten but you make me want to throw up.”

She is wearing a pair of your briefs and that is all. Of course she picked the fucking blue ones. You imagine her pawing through everything you own just to find your blue underwear _just to piss you off_. The most irritating thing of all is the fact that she’s actually shockingly, almost offensively beautiful. The kind of beautiful that you want to punch in the face. Her skin’s dark chocolate and lustrous, half her head is shaved and the other half is long, long braids, fastened with electric blue elastics, and her body is killer – she’s five eleven, a perfect hourglass with enough muscle on her to lift you with one hand, legs that go on for fucking miles, and the cherry on top of the cake is her gorgeous and totally shit-eating grin. You are extremely jealous of Vriska and you want her to die. You realise that she’s holding two dresses over her arm.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” you snip. “I’m not being your fucking outfit advisor or whatever the fuck again.”

She holds up the two of them alternately against her chest. One is bright red and genuinely has more cutaway parts than it does actual fabric. The other is white, long-sleeved and barely an inch longer than absolutely necessary. Both of them would look fantastic on her. She knows this.

“You sure? Come on, gimme your first instinct,” she chuckles, and your hand twitches on the remote. You might throw it at her head in a second.

“Fuck off.”

“Hey, anyway, don’t you have work tonight, pipsqueak?” she needles meanly, and your Coke can buckles under the pincer force of your fingers.

“Yeah, in _three hours_ ,” you spit back, and she chuckles.

“Oh, okay, then you have time to answer my question!”

“Will you please get the fuck out?”

You’re impatient at the best of times. When Vriska gets involved, you have no filter whatsoever between your brain and your mouth.

“If you tell me which looks better!”

“They both look fucking awful!”

“Aw, Karkat, c’mon…”

“What in the hell makes you think my opinion is relevant anyway, for fuck’s sake, I’m not even _into_ chicks, especially not you of all fucking people –”

“Yeah, but you can appreciate a beautiful woman, right?”

“Yes! And you are not one of those!” you lie. “Now can you move your stupid ass out of the god damn way!”

“Ugh, _whatever_ ,” she huffs at you, rolling her eyes like a teenager. She’s twenty four years old, for fuck’s sake. “Stupid ho.”

She prances away, but not before you remind her that, “Vriska, you are not Nicki Minaj,” and she laughs, and in spite of how fucking annoying she is, you find yourself smirking just a tiny bit too.

Now she’s playing Stupid Hoe at full volume because, duh, why the fuck would she not? Obviously that’s a mature and rational reaction. And of course she has boosted the bass. You turn on subtitles and feel anger bubbling like bile at the base of your throat. It’s okay, you tell yourself. She will be leaving in about half an hour.

_Ice my wrists and I piss on bitches_

You have never hated anyone as much as you hate Vriska Serket.

_You can suck my diznik if you take this jizzes_

You wish fervently with every fibre of your being that her head would explode.

_You don't like them disses, give my ass some kisses_

You’re gonna _kick_ her fucking ass, is what.

_Yeah they know what this is, givin’ this the business_

Trouble is you have nothing on her.

“BOY YOU GOT MY HEARTBEAT RUNNING AWAAAYYYY.”

Okay, no, you are so done with this bullshit. You slam your Coke down on the coffee table and leave the living room, thundering into the hall and stamping up the stairs with as much force as your little legs will allow. It is not loud enough to drown out Nicki _or_ Vriska, but you at least have an outlet for your anger. You might as well get ready for work now, it’s not like she’s going to let you enjoy your precious few hours before your night shift. You fling open your bedroom door and slam it shut with a boom that synchronises perfectly with the drums in Starships. Obviously she is doing this on purpose. _Obviously._

You catch sight of yourself in your closet mirror, and frown.

“Starships were meant to flyyYYYYYYYYY.”

You look like shit, although you’re not entirely sure what you were expecting. Still in your boxers and the same grubby grey t-shirt you were wearing when you rolled out of bed this morning, you’re pretty much the spitting image of That Loser who still lives in his parents’ basement with no good reason, except Vriska is your ‘mom’. And you’re only twenty-two.

You’re five foot seven, a fact that Vriska just loves to tear into you for. She’s single-handedly decided that your shortness is due to a combination of being dropped on your head too much as a kid, too much masturbation, and being too busy sucking cock to get adequate nutrition. She can go to hell. You’re just short. It runs in the family, you think. Besides, you might be short but you’re sure as hell not skinny: you are quite comfortably average, and when she’s been particularly tearful she’s called you _cuddly_ , but you prefer the terms broad-shouldered and stocky.

While you might not be tall, or particularly handsome – with your crooked-ass nose and constant frown and weird big buggy eyes – you certainly have dark covered. The amount of cooing you’ve heard over your flawless dark coffee tan is more or less infinite; everybody wants to know how the hell you stay so dark even in the winter, and you shrug, because you don’t try. You feel like people think it’s attractive, though, and it’s one of the very few things that you actually like about yourself. You cup your stubbly chin with one hand, and then run your hand through your hair. You let Vriska cut it for you; she thinks it looks best short at the sides and longer on top, and begrudgingly you have to admit that she’s not wrong.

_Shine bright like a diamond._

You find Rihanna marginally less offensive. You also don’t fail to notice the hilariously depressing irony of this song playing while you’re picking out your cookie-cutter Walmart uniform – the navy blue polo shirt, and khaki jeans that fit pretty close to your legs. You’ve seen more than one shelf-stacking kid check out your ass when you bend down in these babies.

You laugh at yourself as you pull the shirt over your head, and when the chorus kicks in, you don’t hesitate in singing along with Vriska, who is outdoing Rihanna by a considerable distance.

“WE’RE BEAUTIFUL. LIKE DIAMONDS IN THE SKY.”

You can hear her laughing.

“I love you, Karkles,” she yells through the wall. Her room’s just on the other side.

“I love you too, you piece of shit,” you holler back. Rihanna is promptly silenced, as you button your jeans, and Vriska tumbleweeds into your room without so much as knocking.

“I decided on the white one,” she tells you, and you glance at her for half a second, and then double-take.

“That was what I was gonna say,” you say, grinning wickedly at her. She does look fucking fantastic, obviously. She has neon blue platform heels on that make her impossibly tall, like some exquisite statue, and she’s painted her lips bright blue too. She reminds you of a lightning bolt, sometimes, thrillingly quick and deadly.

“Obviously! You have the best taste, Karkles,” she says at you, and then cackles as she totters across the room to ruffle your hair. You frown and try and duck away from her, but there is no escaping the Serket. “Now I’m gonna head out. I don’t know when I’ll be back, probably before you though, suckeeer!”

“Yeah, well. At least one of us is going to have a decent night,” you sigh, adjusting the collar of your shirt. Damn her.

“Hey, you never know. I heard Walmart’s jumping on a Friday night,” she says, and then snorts behind her perfectly manicured hand. You scowl at her; she gives you a wink, and then she’s off. You don’t think that Seattle’s ready for her, but at least she’s out of your hair for now.

An hour and a half later, you stick the key in the ignition of your shitty little car, and after a moment’s patience and a series of worryingly unhealthy noises, the thing coughs and hacks into life and lets you back it off the driveway. You work at the Walmart in Renton, about a twenty minute drive away, and every shift you wonder if it’s gonna be the last trip this car will make. Tonight, though, it’s dependable as always, and you trundle down the interstate without incident, under the big sky, starless and stained with orange light streaming from streetlights.

The police sirens blaring towards you and screaming neon on and off are more numerous than usual. You don’t think a lot of it, but you light up a beaten cigarette anyway to take the edge off. Something bad’s always happening. Pays to ignore it, really, you decide, sucking down smoke and warmth.

Soon enough you pull up in the parking lot. Sirens are still streaming past you, in the direction you came from. You flick the butt of your cigarette in the gutter, slam shut your car door, and frown towards Seattle. Trying not to worry, you scowl anyway as you swan through the automatic doors. Your feet squeak on familiar checkered tiles, and the fluorescent lamps buzzing overhead herald your entry.

This Walmart wasn’t always twenty-four hour, and the funniest part is that people tend to still treat it like it shuts at eleven – it’s a quarter to midnight by now and the place is deserted. You always feel like a dick for putting anyone down for graveyard shifts, because there’s rarely anything to do. On instinct, your feet carry you to the back of the store, to the pharmacy. You like one of the girls who works the pharmacy, a lot, and you happen to know she’s working tonight. You only pass a handful of people, mostly groups of confused-looking teenagers.

“Karkat! Hey!” someone comfortably familiar calls to you, as you emerge from the tampon aisle.

You catch sight of her behind the counter on an office chair that has just stopped spinning. She props her tiny feet up on the counter and an enormous grin splits her pale face. Aradia is a total sweetheart, that much is plain to see just from looking at her – she’s half Japanese, five foot two, slight and skinny like a little pixie, and with a wicked heart-shaped face and these narrow velvet-black eyes that are always glittering. She reminds you of a bad cat. She has a long glossy curtain of straight black hair, and when she can be assed she’ll throw it back in a braid, but tonight is not one of those nights; it’s spilling everywhere, over her shoulders, over the counter, over everything.

“Hey there,” you say. You’re not usually so mean to Aradia because she’s too cute. “What’s up?”

She shrugs, throwing up her hands. “Not a lot! Twenty-four hour pharmacies are predictably quiet at night!” Her eyes crinkle at her own little joke.

“Hey, someone had to take the graveyard shift,” you say, instantly defensive, and then you rub your temple. “Sorry. But I’ve been letting you off a lot lately.” It’s true. You give Aradia kinder shifts, usually. You walk up to her, laying your palms down on the pharmacy counter, and she takes down her feet to rest her elbows on it, propping her chin on her hands and looking up at you.

“It’s okay really,” she says, and then chuckles. “Actually it’s been great, there’s nothing to do so I’ve been working on an essay. I might actually finish it before the deadline this week!”

Aradia’s an archaeology student. From the way she prattles on about ancient civilisations, you can tell it means the world to her, but her enthusiasm for the subject is, you think, not quite matched by her love of actually studying. Still, she’s a dependable employee, at least.

“Better than me when I was in college,” you say, lip curling, and her eyes widen. You feel extremely old when things like this happen. She’s only nineteen. Three years your junior and she treats you like you’re an old man.

“No kidding? I would’ve thought you were like a model student!”

“Aradia, I work in goddamn _Walmart_ ,” you say, emphasising each syllable.

“Well, you’re store manager!”

“Yeah, but only because everyone else is too stupid or too busy to do it,” you huff. “Anyway, I majored in Film Studies. Don’t take Film Studies. Okay?”

Aradia giggles. “Okay!”

“Good.”

You really do love Aradia. You always get angry when boys do horrible shit to her like break up with her or cheat on her. You may or may not have actually hunted one guy down just to teach him what happens to people who screw around with Aradia Megido. She’s so sweet and naïve she just thinks that life is a big game, and you’ve got her back, always.

“Hey, so, um, your friend who you introduced me to the other night…”

“Dave? What about him?” you say, thinning your eyes at her. You aren’t too sure it counted as much of an introduction, either. It was more like she was hovering in the back of your Skype call in the break room and then swanned over to stick her nose into your business.

“Are you and him…?”

“What? Are we what?”

You can feel your ears burning red already. You think you know what she’s trying to get at, here.

“You know, together! An item!”

Your stomach turns at the thought, and you scowl. You’re pretty you cannot imagine anything more repulsive than being with that self-important asshole. You are also pretty sure she’s only asking because she has the biggest damn crush ever on him.

“Uh, no. No, and never. Not only is he an annoying prick – yes, he is, shut up – he’s also straight. Our relationship is strictly professional.”

You do not like admitting to people that you work as a webmaster for an eighteen year old kid’s stupid webcomic on the side of working at Walmart, but hey, it pays the bills.

“Oh! Okay, so, does he have like, a girlfriend?”

“I fucking knew it.”

“Answer the damn question,” she says menacingly, lips turning in a frown, and you roll your eyes.

“He’s single. Pretty recently.”

“Oh! Cool,” she says, semi-casual, leaning back in the desk chair, folding her arms. “I was just wondering.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Aradia,” you tell her, and she throws back her head and laughs at your expense. Everybody who knows you knows better than to lie about their romantic leanings. You see through that shit like you have x-ray fucking vision.

“Okay, okay! He’s pretty cute, alright? But you said he’s from Texas, right? I don’t know if long-distance is for me,” she says, sighing as she curls a strand of hair around her finger. “What about you, then? Any handsome boys caught your eye lately?”

You sigh bitterly. You’ve been single for the past three years, sleeping around but not really getting close to anyone. You have Aradia and Vriska, though, your best friends, and Dave… well, Dave’s an ass, but he’s decent enough company – and he’s on the other side of the country, as well as having internet that’s patchy at best, so you don’t have to deal with his bullshit too often.

“Karkat, you’re zoning out! What, is the answer too embarrassing?”

“Huh? No. I was just realising how pathetic the whole thing is. It was like a grainy montage of my catastrophic attempts at securing a mate was playing slowly in my mind accompanied by shitty club music because I can’t get that out of my head thanks to –”

“ _Vriska_ ,” the pair of you say at the same time, and she laughs, but you don’t.

“And yeah, no, I’m still determinedly single, thanks,” you snort, and she’s still laughing. At least someone finds it funny because you sure fucking don’t.

“Aww. Well, I’m sure you’ll meet someone soon,” she says, fiddling with one of the many bracelets on her wrist. “You deserve to be happy, you know.”

“Ugh, Aradia, shut up,” you grumble, but you feel the heat swell to your cheeks anyway.

“I’m serious! I don’t think I know anyone who deserves happiness more than you do! You put up with so much shit, you gave me a job even though I’m useless, gosh, you’re just such a nice person,” she blathers at you, and by the time she stops to take a breath you’re just blinking at her, stupefied.

“ _Nice?_ ” you spit out. “Jesus, I have not been trying hard enough.”

She sputters, and then chuckles. “I’m just saying, you know.”

“Thanks. Makes a nice change from Vriska berating me constantly,” you say, and then a couple of seconds of silence pass, in which Aradia grins patiently and pityingly at you. You feel compelled to fill it. “Say, did you see all those cop cars passing by? About half an hour ago?”

She nods, earnest.

“Yeah, it seemed like there was a lot of them… I hope nobody’s hurt, or anything,” she sighs, and your mouth slants. You thought she might know what was going on, what with her enormous network of friends and propensity to over-share information about _everything_ , but apparently not. “They’re headed back to Seattle, I think – make sure you take care!”

“Don’t worry about me,” you say, which might as well be your catch phrase for the amount of people you’ve said it to over the course of your life. “My neighbourhood’s pretty quiet so it’s probably nothing near where we are.”

You don’t betray even an inkling of the fact that you are worried, actually, and your little cigarette did nothing to soothe your anxieties. You tell yourself that cop cars heading to Seattle is not _unusual_ … but there were so many. Luckily, before either of you can say anything else on the matter, you’re interrupted.

Cutting through the otherwise eerie quiet of midnight Walmart, you hear a heave and then a splatter against the linoleum, accompanied quite swiftly by _Clean-up on aisle seventeen_.

“Fucking drunk highschoolers,” you grumble under your breath, and Aradia bites back her laughter, grinning at you. “Catch you later, halfpint.”

“Byebye,” she coos at you, and then there’s a huff and the sound of paper hitting tabletop.

* * *

Your shift ends not a minute too soon at three in the morning.

You get through the door and feel the sweet relief of being _home_ almost instantly. Your job’s not too stressful, but you hate people – Aradia is one thing, but the drunk or high or drunk and high students that want their fix of donuts or whatever-the-hell always piss you off. You flick on the light in the entrance hall and kick off your shoes. You’re actually fully prepared to crawl into bed still wearing the stupid Walmart get-up, when you hear a god-awful sound from the kitchen.

It’s this low, guttural moan. Sounds like whoever’s making it is both in extreme pain and is also really really excited. You imagine that Vriska’s bought home some poor sap and is now treating them to her favourite kinks, but why the fuck she has to do it in the kitchen of all places, you don’t know. You’d be perfectly happy to just head upstairs now and deal with this fuckery in the morning, when your stomach rumbles. Oh god damn it.

Bristling, you cross the hall and stand in front of the kitchen door, clutching the handle. It’s open a crack but the light’s off and you can feel it’s freezing in there. Now you can hear some harsh, rattling breathing, like the air’s kicking around in someone’s lungs, catching in their throat. They’re gasping. Jesus, Vriska’s a fucking criminal. You mentally steel yourself – just push the door open quickly, flick on the light, make your apologies and leave with cereal. It’ll be fine. You’ve been in situations more awkward than that.

Maybe you should knock first. Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.

You rap your knuckles three times on the kitchen door.

The ensuing shit storm, in hindsight, really makes you wish that you _hadn’t_.

You have no idea what the fuck’s going on but suddenly the kitchen door is splintering and bowing in front of you, someone’s hammering on it with a massive and impossibly strong arm – shit shit shit – you back away as quick as you can, flailing backwards into the opposite wall, your heart jackhammering away against the walls of your ribcage and then the door’s tossed aside by – someone? Something? Why the fuck are you still standing there, you fucking idiot, you scream inwardly but your feet just won’t _move_ and then the dust starts to clear and you can see what’s standing in the doorway in the watery hallway light and you don’t fucking believe it, what’s going on, this shit doesn’t happen in real life now you need to yell for Vriska shit what if she’s not home you’re so screwed you’re going to die you’re

“VRISKA, WE HAVE A SITUATION.” Your lungs suddenly take charge and the thing in the doorway is looking straight at you or you think it might be you have no idea you can’t see where its eyes are, you’re coated in cold sweat and it’s _fucking breathing and it can smell you_ and it starts lurching towards you, staggering and tongue-lollingly, it doesn’t have a bottom jaw, it’s the colour of rotting meat, it’s not a human, surely not, you can see where its skin has been stripped away in ribbons to reveal eaten-at muscle and a maggot falls out of its eye socket.

No. No no no no no. Nope.

You whip around the banister quicker than you’ve ever moved in your life and that thing points its weird ugly decomposing face in your direction but it’s slow, and you take the steps two at a time because Vriska will be in her room if she’s here at all and what if one of those things has found her too, what if there’s more of them, what the fuck is going on, you didn’t even think that they existed – a soft thump, a squish. It’s trying to follow you upstairs but you glance back over your shoulder and it can’t seem to get purchase on the steps, it’s flailing its piecemeal limbs and groaning up at you and shit you need to lay off the drugs, or something, because this ain’t right.

Blistering through Vriska’s bedroom door you do not apologise, and you slam down the light switch, and you don’t see Vriska at first but you do see one of _those things_ leaning down low and breathing raspily, urgently, shit, Karkat, fucking do something you useless fucking lump, adrenaline drives you forwards and you plough your booted foot into the side of its skull, which crunches, squelches and splatters on the impact, you just decapitated it with one fucking kick, holy hell, you are Superman. The smell of rotting flesh burns up your lungs but there she is, Vriska, lying on the floor in just her underwear. Well, okay, she’s technically also wearing what you guess is a headless corpse.

Suddenly you start laughing because what the fuck is going on? And she thrashes out with a fist to punch you in the shinbone.

“Ouch!”

“Karkat! What are you – what is this – is this a fucking joke? Do you think this is funny?!” she screeches, hysterical, as she shoves the carcass off of her and sits up. She’s covered in this gross phlegmy slime that you want to wipe off, but you also do not want to touch it – it’s already splattered all the way up to the knee of your killin’ leg. She’s not injured. Thank god.

“No! No, I don’t think this is fucking funny, which is why you’re gonna explain to me what the _shit_ is going on,” you spit right back at her, hauling her up under her arms and setting her down on her bed before rifling through her wardrobe, throwing clothes in her direction. “And get dressed while you’re at it. There’s one at the bottom of the stairs. We need to get out of here.”

You are Karkat Vantas.

You’re store manager at fucking Walmart. This makes you uniquely qualified to handle unexpected, last-minute changes of protocol.

Like zombies showing up on your doorstep.


End file.
